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In today’s edition, Joe shares:
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A father, a brand, and the oldest lesson in Stoicism
- 50,000 people on three continents in one weekend
- Hawk Call wins his first North American Championship
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Pinch Yourself
Saturday morning I stood at the base of Killington next to Matt Novakovich. One of the greatest to ever race this sport. I've watched him destroy that mountain more times than I can count. This weekend he wasn't there to race. Three months ago, almost to the day, he lost his son.
Josh was 25. He and Matt were business partners. They built homes next door to each other. In June, Josh was swept away surfing the bore tide in Alaska. Matt spent the last hours of his son's life on the phone with him, telling him to keep moving, stay warm, get big.
I don't have words for that. Nobody does.
But I'll tell you what Matt did. He and his family took a hot iron and branded a single letter, N, onto their shoulders. Not a tattoo. A brand. Something that hurts going on and never comes off. A mark that says: we are still here, we are still a family, and we carry him.
It's been in my head all week.
The pinch
The Stoics called it memento mori. Remember you will die. Marcus Aurelius, an emperor who could have had anything, scribbled reminders to himself in a war tent about how short it all is. You are alive for a little while. Then you aren't. Act like you know it.
Standing next to Matt, I did the thing I tell everyone to do and rarely do myself. I pinched myself. I'm alive. My kids are alive. I'm on a mountain in Vermont on a cold September morning, surrounded by thousands of people who got out of bed to do something hard on purpose. That's not nothing. That is everything.
The weekend
9,000 at Killington. 10,000 in Seattle. 10,000 taking on Tough Mudder in London. More than 5,000 from over 45 nations at Misano, Italy. Hurricane Heats running around the clock in Paris. Spartans on course in Japan. More than 100 DEKA events in the same 48 hours.
Over 50,000 people. Three continents. One weekend. Getting cold. Getting wet. Failing an obstacle and doing thirty burpees.
You can't inherit a Beast
Seattle crowned two North American Champions.
Annie Dube took the women's title. Look at her last season. Trifecta World Champion in West Virginia. Super World Champion at Mammoth. Runner-up at the Beast Worlds in Abu Dhabi. Now back-to-back North American Champion. That's not a hot streak. That's a standard.
And Hawk Call won his first.
If the name sounds familiar, it should. His dad is Hobie Call. Three-time Spartan World Champion. Inaugural Spartan Hall of Fame. Won 78 percent of the races he ever started.
On July 9, 2011, Hobie won Utah. On July 9, 2022, eleven years to the day, Hawk won Utah. Four years later, he's the best in North America.
You can inherit a name. You can't inherit a Beast. Nobody carried either of them up those hills. They earned every mile. Alone, in the dirt, on purpose.
The comeback
When the pandemic hit, everything I built stopped. Not slowed. Stopped. You can't run an obstacle race over Zoom. There were days I was sure we wouldn't make it. Then came years of getting people back off the couch after the world spent two years being told comfort was safety. Rebuilding teams. Rebuilding markets. Earning back trust one race at a time.
So when I see 9,000 people at Killington, I don't see a stat. I see proof that the pull toward hard things beats the pull toward easy ones, if you give people somewhere to go.
Without this, most people would sleep in, scroll, and let another weekend of their one short life disappear. This community is built to resist that. Someone in Seattle showed up alone and left with a team. Someone in Italy finished last and got cheered louder than the winner. And a father in Vermont, three months after the worst day of his life, stood at the start line with his people.
Marcus Aurelius wrote alone. Seneca wrote letters to one friend. They had the philosophy. They didn't have each other at scale.
You do.
Pinch yourself. You're alive. Get to the next start line.
Joe
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CHOOSING HARD
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OVER 50,000 PEOPLE. THREE CONTINENTS. ONE WEEKEND. NOT ONE OF THEM HAD TO
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| They Said It |
| "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it."
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| – Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
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➝The Hard Way Podcast with Joe |
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| THE HARDWAY PODCAST
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Rudy Reyes went from a boys' home to Recon Marine to SAS: Who Dares Wins, and he'll tell you the jungle fixes what therapy can't. Watch now.
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